when men were men

There was a time when men were men and sheep were nervous. It’s not like that; one only has to glance through the ranks of today’s male models to spot the difference between those of today and those of thirty years ago. Ok, old machos occasionally rear their huge heads, but for every Vinnie Jones or Jeremy Clarkson there are a dozen David Beckhams, Russell Brands, Richard Hamiltons, Graham Nortons, Alex Zanes, the list goes on and is increasingly populated by the kind of men who would have mocked the A-list as recently as the late 1970s for being too effeminate, too nerdy, or just plain too gay! Even rock’s old warhorses like Lemmy and Gene Vincent have given way to camp figures, fops like Justin Hawkins and Matt Bellamy.

What happened to male role models? Are we experiencing a nationwide testosterone crisis? Has the male population lost sight of how to do it; as Tom Sawyer might have said; spit, smoke and use correctly? Or could it be that society has moved to the point where the patriarch is in fact unnecessary, we no longer need silverbacks to keep our company on track?

It certainly seems that, if celebrity is anything to go by, young men’s concept of who they’d like to be has changed considerably in recent decades; but what about women’s attitudes towards the way masculinity seems to be changing?

Certainly, there is no shortage of women who are attracted to the new breed of more sensitive men. One only has to look at the popularity of figures such as Beckham and Hawkins in pin-up betting to see this, although it is true that such figures still have a strong element of alpha male status, being sports stars or rock stars respectively, albeit wrapped in a softer tone. and most appetizing package. However, the same could be said in all sincerity of a much more macho breed of stars like Vin Diesel or Hugh Jackman. Whether or not this translates to real life is a more difficult question to tackle; mostly due to the fact that real people are not the perfect two-dimensional representations of a single type of character that pin-up celebrities portray. Machismo is a trait that many, both men and women, still find attractive, but perhaps the truth of the matter is that people in general aspire for more in their lives and in their friends and partners, and therefore require more, or at least more diversity of their role models. Perhaps real men aren’t dying out after all, they’re just getting more real. With this in mind, who will mourn the death of the silver back? I do not.